Op said "if you started with a high end card". The GTX 970 was Nvidia's mid-range at the time, and not a great one at that. A 980 Ti or Titan X can still perform reasonably well for a 10 year old card. Even with the 970, the real problem is its low VRAM (and the 3.5+0.5GB fiasco). The AMD RX 480 8G which was comparable but with much more VRAM can still run most games, even if you have to make some compromises.

Indeed, some compromises. A 2015 high-end is in 2025 a midrange at best.

Especially since in 2015 that likely still meant FullHD in SDR, while in 2025 high end would be UHD-1 with HDR.

You absolutely can do modern gaming on it. I literally have 2 friends in our gaming group that are still rocking 970 in their desktops.

They have had to replace the fans on the graphics card a few times and a repaste but other than that they are chugging away.

Also solid lol on "frame generation". Marketing fluff/features like that only exists but because they have run out of real generational performance gains to sell cards with.

I used one until last year and it worked even for most new games.

And yet it can capably power many classics. Skyrim. Portal 2. Witcher 3. The same argument made above about phone hardware is largely true for gaming. The hallmark of modern gaming (and increasingly television) is sadly one of eschewing artistic creation in favor of monetizing eyeballs and the construction of social phenomena, artificial scarcity.

The comment they replied to was that a ten year old PC can do high end modern gaming. Skyrim and Portal 2 are 14 years old, and Witcher 3 is 10. I don't think a 970 could run Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.